5 months of.... this?

Are we really going to go through 5 months of pulling random names and trade ideas out of our asses? I don't even want to read on topic like that. Baseball is so difficult to guess on. Once FA opens and things start to happen I can understand it. But man, this is going to be a long winter if this continues.

Are we really going to go through 5 months of pulling random names and trade ideas out of our asses? I don't even want to read on topic like that. Baseball is so difficult to guess on. Once FA opens and things start to happen I can understand it. But man, this is going to be a long winter if this continues.

Smerf, I'm right there with you, but it's important to recognize this is TD's first full-fledged offseason. Inexperienced posters are going to be trigger happy; let's face it, many of us have been spoiled by the intellectual etiquette of some Twins fans over the last decade. If intelligent people keep posting (and even taking initiative), the rest will catch on.

Nick, I will try to come up with some topics that elicit interesting discussion in the next few weeks, sorry I blew up. Its just frustrating to beat horses down all week. On a lighter note, sluts rule.

Yeah, it's frustrating. Those of us who have spent the past ten years on Twins forums know the procedure... As Pseudo mentioned, some of the new posters may be a bit trigger-happy. But that's okay, they'll soon figure it out. TD is a new place and we're just getting our feet under us.

On the other hand, this "dead zone" only lasts for two months, not five. Once we get near the winter meetings, we'll start seeing real action from front offices and that will generate a lot of quality conversation. Right now, there just isn't much going on.

And remember, the Offseason Handbook releases in less than a week (if you pre-order). If that doesn't generate quality conversation, nothing will. There's A LOT of content in that thing.

Sorry to hijack your thread, but I can't help but wonder if this is thought process is causing the forums to be exclusionary. I have to admit, far-fetched trade possibilities don't interest me to a huge degree, but posts like this make newbies to this site just choose to sit out. In other words, by pushing the concept that the initiates do not have intelligent thought, you are likley holding back the learning process and potentially excluding people who have thoughts that interest you.

Sorry to hijack your thread, but I can't help but wonder if this is thought process is causing the forums to be exclusionary. I have to admit, far-fetched trade possibilities don't interest me to a huge degree, but posts like this make newbies to this site just choose to sit out. In other words, by pushing the concept that the initiates do not have intelligent thought, you are likley holding back the learning process and potentially excluding people who have thoughts that interest you.

Honestly, that was the biggest issue with BYTO and why we're taking a very different approach with TD.

In any forum community (and god knows, I've been a mod/admin in plenty of them), there are differing levels of knowledge and experienced posters are going to get frustrated with the less experienced ones. Here at TD, we've worked pretty hard (and I'd like to think we've been successful) to bridge that gap and not allow long-time users to trample the inexperienced posters. But that frustration is going to be there in any community and once in awhile, posters are going to vent. It's just part of the cycle and outside of imposing Draconian rules on the forum, there's no getting around that. To counter it, we've imposed somewhat strict rules on calling posters names, implying they are stupid, and bitching that certain threads are a waste of everyone's time. I think we've provided a pretty friendly arena for new posters to learn about baseball. It doesn't mean they won't take their lumps while getting up to speed but they won't be insulted repeatedly in the process of doing so and possibly be chased off before they become part of the community.

Looking around the baseball world, I think we've done just that with TD. Some of the old BYTOers don't like the more "friendly" nature of TD but that's just how it goes when you jump into a new community with new rules. On the other hand, BYTO was dying because of its no-holds-barred approach to posting. No one could penetrate that community because of how vicious it could be to new users. I think we've reached a fine middle ground with TD. It's not cork-on-the-fork stupid like RubeChat (I mean, honestly... just reading that site for more than a few minutes feels like I'm exposing myself to brain cancer) but it's not "grab the pitchforks and skewer this guy for even mentioning RBI" like BYTO.

It's a fine line to walk and we're still learning as we go. But given how the community has started to coalesce in under a year, I think we're off to a fine start.

Yeah all these silly random trade ideas are terrible. Let's just wait until Terry Ryan actuall DOES something. Then we can all come here and read the comments where 75% of them will be trashing anything/everything he and the Twins do! Now that's what I call interesting.

I admit that most of the new thread topics right now hold little interest to me, either. You know what I do about that? I don't read them. Simple, yet for me, effective. At the same time, it would never occur to me to try to tell those who do find that kind of thing to be a worthwhile use of their time that they should not do so.

Are we really going to go through 5 months of pulling random names and trade ideas out of our asses? I don't even want to read on topic like that. Baseball is so difficult to guess on. Once FA opens and things start to happen I can understand it. But man, this is going to be a long winter if this continues.

Yeah, I get it, you don't like Mark DeRosa, now grow up and move on.

In all seriousness though, there have only been 1 real trade thread thus far (Josh Johnson) and I started a thread on Chavez and Liriano as well, so I guess I am to blame? But to be honest there was no other new topic on this board other then "Should the Twins trade Mauer?" (This has been beaten to death and its obvious it won't happen)

The one thing that bugs me is that people feel the need to start there own threads/articles to simply give us there ten point plan to fix the Twins this off-season, to be frank I really don't care to sort through 10 different "articles" by guys who aren't part of the core edit group, I think someone should start a "post your perfect off-season plan here" and keep them all in one thread.

In general I think there are to many "article" threads that pop up anyways, since many of the non core edit group (nick, bonnes, seth, parker) actually rarely promote discussion. But this seems to be more of an issue in the general baseball chat, I think a simple "awards" thread would be fine instead of multiple people blogging about who they think deserves the MVP award or what not.

In all seriousness though, there have only been 1 real trade thread thus far (Josh Johnson) and I started a thread on Chavez and Liriano as well, so I guess I am to blame? But to be honest there was no other new topic on this board other then "Should the Twins trade Mauer?" (This has been beaten to death and its obvious it won't happen)

See and I thought it was my blog post (that got promoted to "article" status) about Mauer that was "to blame." But it turns out, it was your fault!

Based on the rest of your comment, however, it appears that you would prefer I and other "non-core" writers keep all of our thoughts to ourselves so we don't keep beating those dead horses you're concerned about. You really might want to consider skipping TD altogether in November because, if they follow the pattern of the past couple of years, once their Offseason Handbook comes out with their own "blueprints" for addressing the Twins' needs, the "core" are going to specifically invite/ask the rest of us to publish our own "blueprints." It sounds like that's exactly what you don't want to see here.

And unless I really misread things from the onset, one of the primary goals of "the core group" in setting up TD was to provide an avenue for other bloggers and wannabe bloggers to get their stuff read and discussed by more people.

In all seriousness though, there have only been 1 real trade thread thus far (Josh Johnson) and I started a thread on Chavez and Liriano as well, so I guess I am to blame? But to be honest there was no other new topic on this board other then "Should the Twins trade Mauer?" (This has been beaten to death and its obvious it won't happen)

See and I thought it was my blog post (that got promoted to "article" status) about Mauer that was "to blame." But it turns out, it was your fault!

Based on the rest of your comment, however, it appears that you would prefer I and other "non-core" writers keep all of our thoughts to ourselves so we don't keep beating those dead horses you're concerned about. You really might want to consider skipping TD altogether in November because, if they follow the pattern of the past couple of years, once their Offseason Handbook comes out with their own "blueprints" for addressing the Twins' needs, the "core" are going to specifically invite/ask the rest of us to publish our own "blueprints." It sounds like that's exactly what you don't want to see here.

And unless I really misread things from the onset, one of the primary goals of "the core group" in setting up TD was to provide an avenue for other bloggers and wannabe bloggers to get their stuff read and discussed by more people.

I didn't mean to pick on your "mauer trade" article, and honestly your blogs have the most substance of any of the non core ones, and often times I prefer yours.

It just seems that sometimes when we come to the forum 70% of the threads are "articles", it's especially cumbersome in the general baseball thread as it really doesn't create any discussion and just clutters things up. (Again do we really need multiple "awards" winners threads/articles?). I'm not saying articles have no place, I just think people should begin to focus more on QUALITY then quantity before they hit the "submit" button on the blog page. Other wise it potentially becomes bleacher report 2.0 (sans 180 mil valuation and slide shows) which is not a good thing

Also, I never ripped TD or what they are doing here I just was suggesting they should try to make the forums more discussion based and less cluttered with articles in the forums, especially articles which have no real substance, so your snarky suggestion of "skipping TD altogether" is a little ridiculous.